Tom Brady, football and childhood heroes

7 min readJun 21, 2022

This article appeared originally in the 2/10/22 issue of the Harrodsburg Herald

Three years, one month, four days, that’s how old I was the first time Tom Brady took the field for the New England Patriots. I wasn’t watching much football that I remember at the time and certainly my Alabama native family wasn’t watching the Patriots. However, I do remember Feb. 3, 2002 my dad had just taken a job as a pastor in the Saint Louis area and our church hosted a party to watch Super Bowl XXXVI. There I sat in a room full of people cheering on the Rams then referred to as “the Greatest Show on Turf.” At 4-years old ,I figured the two teams in the Super Bowl were the two best teams and I would become a fan of the winner, since they were the better of the two. On the final drive of the game, second year quarterback Tom Brady lead his team on a drive for Adam Vinatieri’s game winning field goal that left John Madden astonished and a room full of members of the First Baptist Church highly disappointed. It was then that I figured the Patriots must be the best team in football, and if they were the best I’d be a fan.

I can’t say I tuned in every week of the 2002 and 2003 seasons, but I knew I liked the Patriots and Tom Brady was their best player or

AP Photo/Michael Conroy
New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady celebrates with the…

Tom Brady, football and childhood heroes

Written by David Lee Carpenter